Six Instances Between Two Brothers
by Apple Senorita
Summary: Six instances between two brothers; six moments between Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes, be they good, bad or 'in-between'. Will be Sherlock/John in final chapter. Some angsty moments but some happy ones too, I promise!


**A/N: **This will be six chapters, one chapter for each 'instance'. They go from this one, when the boys are kids, all the way to around the time of the series. I just wanted to have a go at the relationship between Mycroft and Sherlock. Brothers are complicated things, so I thought this will be interesting to do!

* * *

There were four years between the eldest and the youngest Holmes boys. One day Leila Holmes looked down at the smartly clipped hair on the head of her little boy as he read and played quietly in the corner of his nursery. She gave a maternal smile and glanced through to the corridor, where she could see her husband thumbing through his history books at his desk. She decided she would talk to Tobias Holmes about providing little Mycroft with a brother or sister.

The summer that Mycroft was to turn five, he proudly announced to the rest of his school class that he was soon to have his very own little brother or sister. He had just about burst with pride when the teacher had told him what a good older brother he was going to be. But when Sherlock made his appearance much earlier than expected, Mycroft started to resent the little pink thing that he was supposed to be a human being.

For starters, he resented the baby hurting his mother; it was the baby's fault he had found mother bleeding in the living room, screaming for Mycroft to get the phone for her. He resented spending hours in the boring hospital playing with all the other boring children and the boring plastic toys. He resented his father and his grandmother looking after him; his father drank endless cups of coffee and kept disappearing to 'call the office', and his grandmother kept falling asleep and snoring so loudly other families waiting kept staring.

He wanted Mummy back, what was she _doing_? Babies were supposed to come out and then lie wrapped in swaddling clothes, that much Mycroft knew. He had consulted a picture-book on the matter, and the whole thing had looked like a calm and peaceful affair. He resented that the book had lied to him.

He resented that even when he was allowed into his mother's room, Mummy was too busy to talk to him and too tired to hug him. She had given him a smile and stroked his hair, but had gone straight back to sleep. His father had offered to take Mycroft to see the baby, and they set off hand in hand out into the corridor. Mycroft was confused. Why wasn't the baby with Mummy? All of the other babies were with their mothers. Maybe his new brother or sister screamed too much and would keep Mummy awake.

Mycroft couldn't understand why it had to be _his_ baby brother that was so small and weak and had to be put into a special box. Tim McCraw's baby sister hadn't been so small and pink, she didn't have to lie in a small plastic box wrapped in wires and machines. Tim was even allowed to hold her whilst the class all stroked her head. Was his new little brother a robot? Mycroft gave a little gasp at the idea, peering through the incubator to get a good look at the ugly thing that was supposed to be a baby.

"Oh Mycroft I know it looks awful," his grandmother had whispered, pulling him into an annoyingly tight hug, misinterpreting his gasp for horror, "But he'll be fine sweetie, I promise you. He's just a little poorly, but he'll get better."

Mycroft didn't really care. Couldn't Mummy just try again? Maybe then she'd get a baby that did what the book said he was supposed to. Couldn't his mother just leave this one here and get another, one that didn't look quite so useless and...strange?

* * *

A month later and Mycroft had stopped visiting the hospital so much, and he had all but forgotten that the pink worm existed until one day, to his horror, it appeared on the doorstep in the arms of his father. He was happy to see Mummy home, but really, couldn't she have had another go at having a better baby? This was one was still too small.

It was also much too loud. Mycroft had never heard crying like it.

"Father!" he whined, hands clamped over his ears. His father was sat at his desk looking unusually grey. His eyes looked sore, his hair was stood on end and he was ignoring the work scattered underneath him.

"Father!" Mycroft tried again, "Make it stop!"

"Make _him_ stop, Mycroft," his father corrected, "And I would if I could son, I would if I bloody could."

Mycroft harrumphed and marched upstairs to his room to look at his picture-book on babies again. None of _those _babies cried.

Mycroft soon learnt to hate dinner time. His mother would sit with a haggard expression, jigging the baby up and down in her arms and barely touching her food. His father would drink glass after glass of wine and then fall asleep at the table, and the dog ran away to hide away from the noise.

"Maybe he's broken!" Mycroft shouted one meal time over the screaming, trying to be helpful. His mother didn't reply. His father snored. Mycroft dropped his knife and fork and screwed his fingers into his ears.

"What's wrong with you Sherlock?" his mother pleaded, looking down at the boy kicking and wailing in her arms, "What's wrong? Are you hungry? Have you filled your nappy again? Are you in pain? Is something hurting? Are you tired? Look, Tobe, I'm going to walk him up and down the hall again, can you watch Mycroft for me?"

His father continued to snore, but his mother didn't seem to notice. She swept out of the room with the baby and the screaming mercifully died down. The minute it was silent Tobias Holmes shot awake, blinking sleepily.

"What happened, where's the baby, why is there no screaming?"

"Mummy took him for a walk."

"Oh. Oh, alright. Mycroft, you haven't eaten your carrots."

That night, Mycroft lay awake listening to the silence. He had just woken up from a strange, disturbing dream. In the dream _he_ had been the baby, and his parents had put him in the bin because they said Sherlock took up too much of their time to be able to look after him. Mycroft dropped from his first big boy bed and toddled towards his parent's bedroom, hoping for some comfort. Now the baby was quiet, maybe he could get some attention from Mummy and Father.

He snuck into the enormous master room that his parents coveted, and was surprised that he could see the mess the baby had caused even in the dark. His parents had spent thousands re-doing their bedroom whilst they were doing up the nursery, and even Mycroft at aged 4 knew how proud they were of the cream carpet, the plush curtains and the thousands of scatter pillows. The fireplace was imported from somewhere foreign and Mycroft had been told not to go near it under any circumstances; he was also not allowed to touch anything cream or white, walk in the room in his shoes, or play with the ornaments.

So he felt more than a little resentful when he saw Sherlock's baby rubbish scattered all over the room: rattles, bottle tops, milk powder packets, nappies, baby books, everything was spread over the floors and bed as though a bomb had struck in the night. How come the baby's things were allowed to make such a mess?

Mycroft sighed and tiptoed over the debris towards the bed. All he could hear was snoring, but he thought they must have got enough sleep by now, after all the baby wasn't crying and hadn't been for a few hours.

"Mummy," he whispered. He pushed at the mound in the bed. Nothing.

"Mummy," he said, louder. He gave her sleeping form a shove, but still she didn't stir. Mycroft felt his blood boil and he swung around to find the cause of all this disturbance in his young life.

He stalked over to the Moses basket and glared in at the baby that had ruined everything. Sherlock looked up at him with bright blue eyes, arms and legs whirling. Oh, so _now_ he stops screaming, Mycroft thought bitterly.

Mycroft put his face very close to the baby's and hissed, "Why don't you just go back to the hospital and go and live with some other family? You're loud and smelly and _I don't like you_."

Of course Sherlock was completely unaware of what was being said, and he continued cycling his arms and legs in the air. One of his tiny clenched fists inevitably caught Mycroft's nose, and he made a little gurgling noise at the contact. It wasn't violent nor particularly painful, but it was two o' clock in the morning and Mycroft was tired, hurt, and wanted his little pest gone. The punch made his nose sting, and he stared down at the baby with eyes and mouth wide at his audacity.

"Ow!" Mycroft howled, hands going to his nose. He leapt away from the Moses basket and clambered up onto the bed, plonking himself in between his parents and letting rip his own set of impressive vocal cords.

"Mycroft darling what is it?" his mother cried, just about leaping into the air with shock at someone _other_ than Sherlock screaming.

"The baby cries all the time and he won't shut up and you never pay attention to me anymore and he's too little to play with me like you promised and you never talk to me anymore and he always cries and he's stupid and he's annoying and he smells and he just hit me in the face!" Mycroft took a long, hiccupy breath, then wailed, "I _hate_ Sherlock!"


End file.
